THE GOD WHO DELIVERS & GUIDES: MY ENCOUNTER WITH EXODUS

The summer of 1988 found my wife, our two children, and me living in an eastern state hundreds of miles from our home in Oklahoma. I was working in a moderate-sized non-profit organization providing services to about 300 direct clients and numerous others. I was the executive responsible for education and outreach, and reported to the CEO, the only other fulltime executive on staff. While the work was stressful, I did feel our organization was having an increasingly positive impact in the community.

Then the bottom dropped out. It was a Monday morning, and I was preparing to leave town for a work-related meeting lasting until Friday. Just before departing the CEO called me into his office and he matter-of-factly informed me that my position was being eliminated due to budget cuts. He told me that our revenue collections was down significantly and that our organization could not support two fulltime executives the following calendar year. So, I had about 4-5 months to find another job.

I immediately did not share this information with my wife because I did not desire her to worry about this situation alone. I drove several hours to the retreat center for the meeting processing all that I knew. I continue to process for the next several days. Then about mid-week it happened.

During a break in the meeting I was resting on the bed in my room. I was in the in-between zone of awake and asleep when I heard an audible voice saying, “Get up and go to town!” Now, I am a very rational person but I knew instantly the voice commanding me was God’s. So, I instinctively obeyed. I drove to a city totally unfamiliar to me, went to a mall I had never visited before, and entered a bookstore I obviously had never shopped in before. And in a minute or so, I found it.

“It” was a book entitled The Presence: The God Who Delivers and Guides by Bruce Larson, a Presbyterian pastor from Seattle. The book was a study of Exodus found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Exodus details how God delivered the Hebrew slaves from Egyptian captivity and guided them to the Promised Land. I purchased the book, returned to the retreat center, and began reading it.

In effect, the Exodus became my story of how God delivered my family and me, and guided us back towards home. Exodus was not just “their” story; Exodus became my story, also. My approach to Exodus at least in this sense was personal and not a formal academic study.  Indeed, by the January 1, 1989, we were living in Overland Park, Kansas, a few hours drive north of our home in Oklahoma. I was also again gainfully employed in yet another non-profit with similar challenges (and that is another story).

Some time later I wrote Bruce Larson, the author, to share my experience in finding his book and the impact reading it had on me. I received a very gracious reply from him. I have regretfully lost his letter.

Before leaving that eastern state and moving to Kansas, I was surprised by some research I conducted. I knew that the CEO had on occasion played loose with the truth. When I discovered that he was engaging in immoral (but not illegal) behavior, I checked the dates of when he commenced that behavior and when our organizational revenues began to show marked decline. They had occurred within a week of each other! In addition, when his behavior became the stuff of rumors in our community, he was fired after an investigation and left before I did. Pharaoh tried to outsmart everyone else and we know how that ended!